Portland Heights was a new status address in the late 1800s. Today, the band of land at the base of Washington Park is still packed with Colonial Revival to Craftsman trophy homes designed by the city's star architects.

In the beginning, access to the once-remote area was made easier by cable cars and a trestle, followed by paved roads and the Vista Bridge. Land prices then zoomed to $10,000 an acre by 1910.

Portland Heights continues to be the location of some of the most expensive residential properties in the city.

In this week's real estate gallery, we look at homes for sale or recently sold in Portland Heights.

Tour goers will explore both sides of Southwest Vista Avenue, heading north (downhill) and experiencing a wide variety of architectural styles and special features completed between the 1890s and 1920s.

Clay also gives mini biographies of the architectural careers of A.E. Doyle, Emil Schacht, Edgar Lazarus, Morris Whitehouse, the firm Whidden and Lewis and and Clay's favorite, William Christmas Knighton, who has about 20 buildings that have earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

"People like to know about the owners and personalities," says Clay. "Some owners, like two leading steel magnates, tried to outdo each other in grandeur." No expense was spared building the 1922 Joseph R. Bowles House, which has reinforced concrete walls, a Spanish tile roof and Italian marble columns.

Clay says tour goers also enjoy learning that development was linked to the cable car and trestle, and the time one cable car's brake didn't hold and became loose from the turnaround. Clay continues: "Conductors jumped off while several passengers had a wild ride back to the bottom and miraculously no one was hurt."

Clay, a volunteer with the nonprofit heritage center, also guides groups to modest apartments and cottages where teachers and service workers lived.